Potato is yum

So now that we know the devs aren’t dead or something I guess I could actually say what I think about the philosophy behind battlebit as a game. When the game initially released it was hailed as the “battlefield killer”. Well, that aged poorly didn’t it. Battlefield six was incredibly successful and I think the gameplay of battlebit and BF6 kind of align.

The new updates to battlebit attempt to polish the sound and visual clarity of the game. This is something battlefield somehow does incredibly well with the little triangle marking enemies at times where they are obviously marked. BF6 somehow does an incredible job at this spotting and makes the game much easier for a casual to play. I’m used to big combined arms games like planetside and appreciated the ease of spotting in planetside. However, planetside is an old game with many other issues that make much of the good things it does irrelevant.

The snappy gunplay in battlebit was something I really liked and was mildly disappointed to see it slowed down in the playtest. I felt like I had to track ahead of my opponents to get kills and it felt clunky and slow. Looking at the comments, this is likely a result of the server lag and memory leak but I hope the devs consider going back to the more fast paced formula that worked in the original release of the game.

One of the other things I feel is missing is the existence of any amount of cohesive squadplay. I know that battlebit has roots in milsim gaming and I feel like a beacon system similar the planetside might help with improving the cohesivness of squads instead of everyone just balling up on a point and using squadmates as spawn points.

Some of my favorite memories in planetside were made in a squad of twelve dudes inside of triple fighting off an entire platoon of 48. The benefits of skilled cohesive squadplay in planetside were well established but not necessary to have fun and for every hour of sweating in triple was an hour of turning my brain off and following the zerg. I’ve seen people hate on the milsim roots of battlebit but I kind of want to see a bit more of it. Maybe in one of the playtests. Who knows.